Touch by Diane Ackerman Response

Touch can mean different things to different people.  Touch can represent either being touched physically by someone or something, or touched emotionally.  Some people may abuse touch or some people use it to comfort.  For example, touching and being touched by our mothers is the most significant memory of love, which helps us live a long life. Who knew that even being hugged or touched by you’re mother, as a child, would help a person grow, which can even decrease stress.

Without knowing it, touch allows us to find our way in the world, through the darkness or though light.  Touch allows us to figure out if something is hard, soft, heavy, or light.  Touch fills our memory with important details as to how we are formed.  Touch can even bond us to another person, through a kiss.   Touch is everywhere, whether you think it is or not.

Masking Tape Shoe

We were asked to take a pair of shoes and recreate that pair of shoes out of masking tape.  This was an interesting assignment because it allowed us to use a different medium and create an object that we use in our daily life, a shoe.  There wasn’t a set in stone was of doing this, except for looking at the details of the shoe and doing it as you went along.  Taking the shoelaces off of the shoe to get a better feel for the shoe was a good idea which I used multiple times to really connect with the shoe. 

Masking Tape Shoe In Process

Some in process photos of the masking tape shoe project

Soap Carving Changes

Soap Carving Changes In Progress

The process on the soap changes. 

Before any changes:

Change # 1: Added ink covered soap shavings

Change # 2: Added ketchup/soy sauce mixture

Change # 3: Froze it in the freezer

Change # 4: Sautéed on the stove 

Change # 5: Cut it

Change # 6: Boiled it on the stove

Change # 7: Added food coloring

Change # 8: Added a glaze

Soap Carving

For this project we had pick out a plastic animal and create two realistic carvings of the animal out of soap.  I chose my favorite animal, a pig.  The soap animal had to replicate the plastic animal with the same proportions.  Now carving out of soap sounds easier than it actually was, it was a real challenge working with the soap trying not to carve off too much. 

So the best one of the two soap carvings was chosen to stay as it is, and the other was to be manipulated and changed so that it doesn’t look like the animal it started off to be. 

Soap Carving In Process

Some in process photos of the soap carving project